


and the only solution was to stand and fight +1

by zinikornis



Series: and the only solution was (to stand and fight) [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Dad Steve Rogers, Domestic Fluff, F/M, Grief/Mourning, I'm Bad At Tagging, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, Lawyer Steve Rogers, M/M, Past Peggy Carter/Steve Rogers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-15
Updated: 2021-03-15
Packaged: 2021-03-23 01:55:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,088
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30048174
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zinikornis/pseuds/zinikornis
Summary: This really wanted to be written in addition to the previous 8 chapters, making the whole work have 25517 words overall.Closure? Nah. Resolution to the Zola line? Of course not. Less OOC characters? Come on now.((I guess it can be read even if you haven't looked at the previous chapters, but originally it was written as extra content for that.))
Relationships: Clint Barton/Natasha Romanov, James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Series: and the only solution was (to stand and fight) [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2210454
Comments: 2
Kudos: 2





	and the only solution was to stand and fight +1

**Author's Note:**

> Magyarul: { [Egy megoldás volt csak +1](https://andweweremadlyinlove.blogspot.com/2021/03/egy-megoldas-volt-csak-extra.html) }

The radio was already peacefully producing those cracking noises on the counter early in the morning, shamelessly not in sync with the sizzling of the pan.

Having been done with his run in the small hours and the shower after that as well, Steve was, now in fresh clothes, humming along to the tunes while making pancakes. 

All the while, his dear adorable nitwit was wondering about his potential superhuman powers that could’ve aided him in making out any kind of tune from this messy medley.

Another sound was added to the messy medley when the weary phone thrown carelessly on the table made a miserable attempt of ringing.

Steve literally  _tsk_ ed the device as he rushed to wipe his hands on the dish cloth and turned around. 

Obviously, Bucky  _ did  _ laugh at him for this because what else is a roommate and boyfriend for.

“Hallo, this is Steve Rogers,” he said to the phone while staring at Bucky disapprovingly.

Bucky tried to feel bad.

“Oh,” said Steve, and marched out of the kitchen with a serious face, but only after shooting a meaningful look at his boyfriend and pointing to the breakfast in process.

Bucky got up lazily, and took the matter of pancakes in his own hands, literally.

A few crippled and a few pretty okay ones later he was, while waiting for another pancake to be ready, playing with one particular button of the radio in hopes of finding at least one channel without static, when he registered the sound of footsteps, then a heavy body dropping down to the barstool.

Bucky glanced over his shoulder with a bragging look. “I messed up only a few!” He turned back to the pancake to flip it.

Steve smiled softly at the muscular back and the flagrantly messy bun.

The metal arm quickly reached for the dish towel, accompanied by mumbled cursing, and, doing damage control, scrubbed itself in it. Oil deteriorates metal.

Bucky piled the last pancake on top of the stock, and turned off the stove. He neatly placed the used bowl previously containing the gooey sludge in the sink (this was him being respectful and mindful of the relationship of that and Steve), and the plate in the, sorry, on the table.

Then, stepping next to Steve, he noted: “You’re quiet. Who was that on the phone?”

Steve looked up at him. “My mother-in-law.”

Bucky went serious too. Steve sighed and started pacing around the kitchen.

“Amanda hates to ask for help. Turns out, she’s been hospitalized for a while now. She could be released if she had someone to take care of her. According to her, she doesn’t. Not since her husband passed away, anyway. She tried to hide it by saying how long it’s been since she last saw Sarah.”

“Ehm,” said Bucky. “So the mother of your late wife is coming to visit.”

“Sort of.”

“Sort of?”

Steve scratched his nape. “She’s been hospitalized, needs someone to take care of her; it’s serious. She can’t travel on her own. I’ve got to go get her.”

“Ah.”

“Buck, sweetie?” Steve inched closer and hugged the waist of his boyfriend. “I’d like to leave my house and daughter to you while I’m away, if that’s okay with you. It’ll be about two days. What d’ya think?”

Troubled, Bucky sighed. “Huge responsibility. I’m happy you trust me this much though.”

Steve laughed. “How the hell not, my dear witnit.” He gave Bucky a sloppy smooch on the mouth. “Everything’s gonna be okay.”

(Everything was okay, everything was okay, everything was okay.)

The next day, Bucky jumped in behind the wheel and transported Steve to the airport. Their goodbye might’ve taken longer than a reasonable amount of time.

He got home to Natasha and Sarah standing in the living room with feet shoulder-width apart. As it turned out, the nanny ‒ with an aggressive self-defense viewpoint ‒ was teaching aikido to the elementary-schooler daughter of his boyfriend.

Bucky sighed and rolled his eyes. Two days. One, if he wished for today to be over soon.

The day after that, Steve called him, and informed him in a voice soaked with apology that they were not going to make it today, so they were to be expected a day later.

Bucky, then, didn’t find the kid ‒ teenager,  _ adolescent, _ she wasn’t a kid anymore ‒, nor Natasha, or Clint either, for that matter, who’d just stopped by.

He registered movement on the other side of the window, so peeked out: Sarah was standing in the ring of Clint and Natasha on the street, aiming at something with a bow while the man was clearly instructing her on the hows.

Okay, so now it was really two days. One, if he wished for today to be over soon.

Bucky had been giving second ‒ and third, fourth… ‒ thoughts and wishing to go back to the past few days right from the very first minutes of Mrs. Carter’s presence in the house.

Her first comment had been: “My dear Peggy darling was keeping this, hm,  _ run-down  _ place so neat and tidy, wasn’t she.”

Then, making her way in, thus catching sight of Bucky (who had immediately jumped to his feet to properly greet the lady), she’d just glanced at Steve and said: “There’s a homeless chap in your kitchen.”

So Bucky wasn’t won over.

It had gotten worse when Steve, sweet soul, had proudly placed his hand on the small of Bucky’s back. Of course he hadn’t suspected this at the time, as the woman’s face stayed aggressively expressionless under the wrinkles.

“Actually, he’s my boyfriend. Bucky, Amanda Carter. Amanda, James Buchanan Barnes.”

“Nice to meet you, Mrs. Carter.”

She’d just huffed and said: “Oh dear. Call me Amanda.”

In the next days to come Bucky had learned what passive-aggressive meant (or at least he thought that was the word for this). Because he  _ had  _ been calling her Amanda as was asked to, but every time he’d done so, she’d seemingly acknowledged this as being disrespectful at the very least, if not a direct attack against her persona right away. Besides that, the new guest, without doubt, outright despised the general being of Bucky.

Life continued to go on though, so Sarah went to school the next day, Steve to work, and Bucky, just to be away as much as possible, ran a few errands. Grocery shopping, a spontaneous visit to an event, the theme of which he himself wasn’t even sure of, to be honest, and stopping by Natasha’s in the end whom he joined on her route back to the house, picking up Sarah on the way.

They found Amanda in the kitchen, in the process of preparing some kind of food for herself. Upon their arrival, although seemingly painfully, she quickly straightened her posture.

“Hello, granny!”

“Hello, dear! How was your day?”

“Fine. I finally got to get revenge on one of my classmates, and‒”

“Pardon?”

“Revenge. I sneaked a pile of shit into‒”

“Now really, Sarah; a proper young lady doesn’t play with… that sort of thing. And doesn’t talk like that either! Watch your mouth. You should have a tea party with your friends instead. Supervised, naturally.”

Bucky shot a look at Natasha that said “see, I told you so.”

Natasha marched forward with an extended arm. “Hello, Mrs. Carter.”

“Dear, I must say, it is always a delight to see a lovely young lady like yourself.”

She smiled humbly. “I’m Natasha Romanoff, Sarah’s nanny.”

“Even more so, then! It’s reassuring to know that my darling granddaughter isn’t entirely orphaned of having a woman’s influence in her upbringing.”

Amanda eyed Bucky with a sharp look until he got enough of it.

“Ehm. I’mma call Steve to see when he’ll be home. I recall today’s an easy day for him.”

And so he did. Dialing Steve’s number, he wandered all the way to the bedroom. He dropped on the bed just when he heard his boyfriend’s voice.

“Steve,” whined Bucky, “only, sweet, dear Steve, when are you coming home?”

There was a muffled chuckle before the actual reply.

“I’m on my way. What’s wrong?”

“Old lady’s being mean to me,” complained Bucky.

“Oh, you poor soul. Be good and make dinner, will you? That’ll get your thoughts off of it.”

“Phh. Thanks, Steve.”

Steve sighed. “Buck, there’s nothing to be done here… She’ll have to stay with us for a while. She doesn’t have anyone else left. Will you be able to make it?”

Bucky quickly weighed his options, and came up with his final answer: “Only if you show me how very much grateful you are.”

The next day, Bucky woke to an ungodly noise.

Squinting, and blinking once, twice, and three times, at last he identified it as the sound of a vacuum machine. Consequently, he also registered they  _ had  _ a vacuum machine at all.

His mind briefly strayed to the paradox of the house always being clean, even though he’d never seen anyone use the vacuum or anything of that sort, except for Steve and his delicate relationship with the dishes. (Bucky had declared the washing machine as his which, he thought, had been suffering through the past long, long years, being lonely and abandoned, and he did, indeed, feel a sense of solidarity towards it.)

The noise kept interrupting his train of thoughts that was making its way through a very morning-foggy brain anyways, therefore he couldn’t dwell on this for long.

He was just about to gather enough willpower to get out of bed and dressed when the door of the bedroom slammed open, and the harsh monster started invading his personal space carelessly.

And there was the other, loud monster too that had woken him, the vacuum cleaner.

Bucky’s mind went blank. He just couldn’t process what was happening in this usually quiet and peaceful room in this usually quiet and peaceful hour. (It was 10 AM. No person should be awake at this time. Or maybe they can  _ start  _ getting up now.)

“Oh, sorry, did I wake you?” Mrs. Carter yelled through the awful noise of the vacuum cleaner with no  _ sorry  _ at all in her voice.

(First of all, yes, he went back to politely calling the mean lady Mrs. Carter. Secondly, he made a mental note to ask Steve about the exact reason that, considering all his money, made him buy this  _ thing  _ instead of something smooth and silent.)

“‘S fine, was gonna get up anyways,” he mumbled. Well, that’s true, he was. In two hours.

“Articulate, my dear,” she hummed with an unreasonably jolly tune.

“Sure thing, Mrs. Carter,” Bucky articulated in his pillow. Then he gathered some strength, got to his feet, throdded to the closet for some clothes, and isolated himself in the bathroom.

When he came back into the room, the sickly old lady was halfway under the bed with her beloved machine.

“Mrs. Carter? Can I take it from you?”

“Isn’t that sweet of you. No, thank you, I’m just rounding it up now. I just can’t seem to reach that one spot… There’s something stuck in there, and this thing just wouldn’t go that far…”

Bucky rubbed his face wearily. He was about to leave her to it when he turned back around, surely going pale now.

He realized what the  _ something  _ was that she didn’t seem to reach, and reconsidered his viewpoint on the machine that was now doing him a huge favor by not being long enough.

“Mrs. Carter, let me take it from you.”

“I’m really nearly done…”

Bucky weighed the possible outcomes quickly, and finally decided on pulling out the big gun. “You are on bedrest, remember?”

She froze, then, after a few moments, slowly got out from under the bed.

“I feel just a little bit better today,” she said, straightening herself, and visibly collecting the pieces of her remaining dignity.

“‘S that so?” Bucky intentionally pressed the unarticulated part, and eyed her challengingly.

She shrugged in the most ladylike way Bucky had ever seen, and simply left the room along with the monstrous device.

And Bucky right after them. This was his chance to unveil the lady ‒ like hell he was going to miss it!

They walked to the living room, where she stopped and looked at Bucky questioningly. Bucky looked back at her questioningly.

She sighed and dropped down to the couch. “You wouldn’t understand, dear.”

“Try me,” said Bucky as he sat down in the armchair across from her.

“Living alone is incredibly lonely, you see. I realized just how alone I am when I was in the hospital. Nobody came to visit me. The only people I am somewhat related to somehow are Steve and Sarah, and they live further than to occasionally drop by for visits. I’ve got nobody else left. So when this idea to come here got into my head, I simply couldn’t resist. But when I got here, you were here as well, and Steve isn’t sad anymore over my dear Peggy, and I just‒”

She looked down at her hands in her lap.

“You felt betrayed.”

“I can’t exactly put a finger on it,” she whispered. “But yes, I do think it is something like that.”

“Mrs. Carter, as far as I know, Steve is just as sad about Peggy’s death as ever. But he’s moved on. It’s natural.”

“Yes, yes…”

“I never meant to be the enemy here, ma’am. I really tried to play nice. If you’re this uncomfortable with me being here though, I can leave and stay out of your way.”

She was fidgeting with the ring on her fourth finger for a while, and Bucky regretted his statement more and more with every turn of the golden jewelry.

When she finally spoke, she lifted her head, straightened her back, and looked straight at Bucky with her firm but sad eyes. “No, James, you are not to do that. The problem lies with me, I’m afraid. I have to be able to accept that Steve has indeed moved on, and is happy now. Even if it’s with another  _ man.” _

Bucky eyed her briefly, and contemplated whether to mention anything about homosexuality being kind of okay now or to open the can of worms she had brought up earlier. He decided on the latter.

“Thank you, Mrs. Carter. I’m here if you need any help,” he said. And then he realized he didn’t know how to round back up on the previous topic.

There was a moment of silence as he was thinking, but fortunately she spoke before he could have.

“So that’s that, then,” she said, swiping non-existent dust off her knees. “I should probably get home, I suppose.”

Bucky looked up at her. “You said you  _ were  _ in hospital. You should stay, rest. With your family.”

She pressed her lips together tightly, and gave a nod so small Bucky almost missed it. “If it doesn’t bother you.”

“They’ve been your family longer than mine, ma’am. It’s fine. You shouldn’t have to go back to a lonely place when you’re recovering, anyways.”

She bowed her head down again. “You’re not wrong there, dear…”

“Mrs. Carter, if I might ask, why are you alone? I mean I know your husband and daughter have both passed, but what about friends?”

“You wouldn’t understand, James.”

“Stop assuming that, would you?”

She jerked her head up, then her gaze went just a tiny bit softer. “You’re right, I shouldn’t make allegations like that.”

“I’ve been through a lot. Believe me, I  _ can  _ understand a lot of things.”

She hummed as her eyes scanned him up and down. He felt almost uncomfortable, but tried his best not to show it.

“Alright then,” she said, with determination in her voice. “But first of all, you really have to stop calling me Mrs. Carter.”

“Fine. But then you really have to stop making faces when I call you Amanda.”

She made a face, but let out a short laugh right after it. Bucky couldn’t believe what was happening. He chuckled too.

“Here we go then. There was a group of us, you see, and we were inseparable, the four of us. Charlotte, Madeleine, Anna, and myself. I’ve got a great lot of stories, but that’s for another time. The problem started when my late husband passed away. With Charlotte, it was about the peaches, you see‒”

“The peaches?”

“Yes, the peaches, those damn things. His obsession was gardening, and the center of our whole garden was that bloody peach tree. Now, Charlotte had never liked peaches. But at some point before his death, she’d suddenly begun to show huge interest in that tree…”

“I’m home!” Steve’s voice travelled through the house.

It found everybody in the living room, followed by Steve himself. Natasha was sitting in one of the armchairs with Sarah between her legs, neatly (and seemingly very tightly) braiding her hair. But when he spotted Bucky and Amanda sitting side by side on the couch, laughing together ‒ he couldn’t believe his eyes.

Bucky bent his head over the back of the couch to look at him.

“Hey, Stevie! Amanda was just explaining why she’s angry with Charlotte‒”

“I’m really more angry with the peaches,” she cut in with the correction.

“Have you ever‒” Sarah tried to look up at him but Natasha pushed her head back down. “Have you heard the story with that bitch Charlotte and the peaches?”

“Language,” Steve hissed. “I haven’t, to be honest, but I would love to.”

“Come here,” said Bucky, patting the couch beside himself where Steve obviously couldn’t fit, “Amanda will tell you all about it.”

“Now you’re playing with me, James,” she scoffed, and got to her feet. “Like hell I will. It’s way past my bedtime.”

As she was walking away to the guest bedroom, Bucky said: “She means  _ ‘you’re kidding me.’” _

_ “That  _ I most definitely do not mean,” Amanda called back.

“I’ve been trying to teach her the lingo,” Sarah admitted. “She’s just so not good at it.”

“I don’t think it’s that she’s not good,” said Natasha, “but rather she doesn’t  _ want  _ to learn. I like her way of speaking more too, to be honest.”

Steve now approached the previously patted spot on the couch and placed his butt on it. He looked at Bucky with nothing but questions in his eyes. Bucky smiled and snuggled up to him. And that was all his explanation.

And finally everything was okay, everything was okay, everything was okay.

(will it stay so?)


End file.
